Once a day, this app sends you a notification at a random time. You then have one minute to take a picture of your surroundings — and then something cool happens

You never know when your notification from OneMinute is going to
arrive, but once it does you have just 60 seconds to take a
picture of your surroundings before the app scoops everyone's
photos up and freezes them in place for all to look at.

The key idea is that all users get their daily OneMinute
notification at the same time, resulting in an international
scramble to find something remotely interesting (or not) to take
a picture of before time runs out.

iTunes

It is this spontaneous, almost flash-mob quality that makes
OneMinute worth downloading. There is something particularly
exciting about knowing that people around the world are anxiously
looking around for something to take a picture of — and the
resulting hodgepodge of photos gives users a glimpse into what is
happening around the world, one photo at a time.

iTunes

To take some of the pressure out of finding something picturesque
in less than a minute, OneMinute keeps everyone anonymous and
lets you capture only a narrow sliver of your surroundings. The
goal is avoid the time-intensive arranging and editing that comes
with photo-sharing apps like Instagram in which people can be
overly concerned about how they present themselves to their
peers.

With OneMinute you get the notification, tap it to access the
app's camera, and snap a picture before the timer hits zero.
After the app collects everyone's photos, you can then browse the
resulting collage of people's lives, which OneMinute likes to
call "one minute of everywhere."

If you miss the notification, too bad. You snooze, you lose. (And
no, you can't choose to ignore the notification until you're in a
more picturesque location. The timer starts once the notification
gets pushed out to everyone.)

Of course, this means the app's
notification can arrive at less-than-opportune times, as
demonstrated by one user who was apparently in the bathroom when
the notification was pushed out.

Users can like photos in the news feed by tapping on them, and
OneMinute allows you to like a photo up to three times.

"I initially thought of the concept while blankly staring at a
monitor, wondering what's happening around the world at that very
moment," OneMinute founder Alex Kwon wrote on
Product Hunt. "There simply was no way to instantly view the
visual status of the world. Oneminute is the answer to the
curiosity I once had."

OneMinute was originally created during Product Hunt's hackathon
in October. After a positive response and some further testing,
Kwon is opening up OneMinute for everyone, starting Friday.